roped | nct au

eight,

__________________

the time had seemed to be going at a snail's pace. the clock was ticking abnormally slow and she's slowly going insane. the pen in her hand twirled anxiously as her heartbeat slowly quicken it's pace. time was moving fast but slow at the same time. mark who had been sitting beside her noticed the girl's jittery figure. her math exercise were finished, it was written in scrawly penmanship contrasting to her normal neat ones.

his palm find his way towards her thigh, gripping it slightly to stimulate her senses again. she jolted in her seat and the twirling pen dropped to the floor and produced a sound that left ringing in her ears while no one else in the class paid no mind to the pen.

"are you okay?" mark whispered into her ears.

haejin faced him and returned with a small smile. "i'm fine. don't worry."

"you were shaking jinji. it doesn't seem fine to me." he replied, worry filled his voice.

"it's just one of those days." she replied, hoping the fake assuring tone suffices. she reached to grabbed the fallen pen before returning to her worksheet again.

mark gazed at her figure who was now relaxed but still with tension as she was slouching but her arms are stiff and tense. as if she was in a stance, ready to attack. she's peculiar to him now. the haejin he had known was long gone. and it was because of him that his happy, carefree best friend was gone and was replaced with a stone cold, fragile soldier. he don't know her anymore.

finally, after gruelling minutes, the final bell of the day rang. everyone in the math class stood up and bow to the teacher before they slowly exited the class, ready to end their day at school. herself on the other hand stayed behind with mark while the other students rushed out the class, along with the teacher who reminded them to clean the classroom before they left since they were responsible for it.

the two made sure that the class was fully empty before haejin turned towards mark. "so what's the plan." she asked, her tone was strong and determined.

"meet at the mansion around 5pm, prepare. then we'll head to a vip club in hongdae. we'll see where the night takes us." mark replied, pulling out his phone and showing her the location of the club.

"send the location to me. who's coming along?" she questioned, pulling out her burner phone and began calculating the route to the location of the club.

"you, taeyong, myself, jaehyun, johnny and doyoung. the rest are monitoring from the headquarters." he said, scrolling through the itinerary from
his own burner phone.

"now that that's set. lets actually clean the classroom." she clapped and smile widely.

"lets go clean!" he exclaimed with equal amount of excitement.

both acts would seemed psychotic to normal people with the conversation they had earlier but it was a norm for them at this point.

___________

the afternoon passed quickly and she was seen getting ready for the night. she had already texted her older brother saying that she had to overnight at mark's house for her history project while she was actually heading to a club, potentially causing a scene.